Hudson River

The Hudson River is a 315-mile river that flows from the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York in the north, downward through the Hudson Valley, and into the Atlantic Ocean at New York Harbor, between New York City and Jersey City. The river serves as a political boundary between New Jersey and New York at its southern end. The river was named after the English explorer Henry Hudson, who explored the river for the Dutch in 1609; previously, the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, in the service of France, had charted the river as an estuary in 1524. The Dutch settlers of New Netherland established a cluster of settlements along the Hudson River, and the English later conquered New Amsterdam and created their own colony of New York.